REUTERS — The first wave of detentions in the new Syria came almost immediately – just after victorious rebels flung open the doors of Bashar al-Assad’s notorious prisons.

As ordinary Syrians stormed detention complexes last December to search for loved ones who had vanished under Assad’s rule, thousands of the deposed dictator’s soldiers who had abandoned their posts – officers and conscripts alike – were taken prisoner by the rebels.

Then came the second wave in late winter: Hundreds of people from Assad’s Alawite sect, mostly men, were seized by the new authorities throughout Syria. Their detentions spiked after a brief uprising along the coast in March killed dozens of security forces, sparking reprisals that left nearly 1,500 Alawites dead. Those arrests continue to this day.

Beginning in the summer there was another round of mass detentions, this time in the south among the minority Druze community. It came after hundreds died in an outbreak of sectarian violence, with government forces accused of summary executions and other abuses.

Throughout, there were other detentions from all denominations in the name of security: large numbers of people, many from Syria’s Sunni majority, accused of vague links to Assad; human-rights activists; Christians who say they have been shaken down for information or money; Shiites picked up at checkpoints and accused of ties with Iran or Hezbollah.

Prisons and lockups that jailed tens of thousands of people during Assad’s rule are now crowded with Syrians detained by President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s security forces and held without formal charges, a Reuters investigation has found.

Reuters compiled the names of at least 829 people who have been detained on security grounds since Assad’s ouster a year ago, according to interviews with family members of the detainees and people who themselves were in detention. In reaching this number, Reuters also reviewed some lists of detainees created by people who organized family visits to seven facilities.

Interviews, lists of detainees and multiple accounts of overcrowding in the prisons and lockups suggest that the number of security detainees is considerably higher than the tally that Reuters was able to establish.

Some of the abuses that Syrians hoped would end with Assad have been revived by men working for the government that replaced him: detentions without charge or a paper trail, some of the same methods of abuse and torture, and deaths in custody that go unrecorded, according to dozens of interviews. Some detainees have fallen prey to extortion, according to interviews with 14 families. Five of the families shared their communications with alleged jailers or intermediaries demanding money in exchange for a relative’s release.

In December 2024, Sharaa pledged to “close the notorious prisons” of the fallen dictator. But Reuters found that at least 28 prisons and lockups from the Assad era have been operational again over the past year.

Asked for comment on the findings of this report, Syria’s Information Ministry said that the need to bring those involved in Assad’s abuses to justice explained many of the detentions and the reopening of some facilities.

“The number of people involved in crimes and violations in Syria under the former regime is very large, given the scale of the abuses committed,” the ministry said. “There are past crimes, involvement in new violations, and threats to security and stability by those associated with the regime, in addition to other crimes.”

The government said far more Syrians had been freed over the past year than are currently detained, but provided no numbers.

The detention facilities identified by Reuters include major prisons, large lockups located in vast complexes once run by Assad’s intelligence apparatus, and smaller lockups at checkpoints and police stations. Prisoners held at these facilities have little legal recourse, and at least 80 families said they lost track of their loved ones for months on end. Access to lawyers and family members varies from one facility to another, and public charges are rarely filed against security detainees, unlike people accused of common crimes.

Reuters also found that security detainees are sent to prisons previously run by rebel forces, including those forces once led by President Sharaa in his powerbase in the northern province of Idlib. The detainees joined inmates already held there for years on security grounds during the civil war, according to a dozen former prisoners.

Across Syria, detainees and families described inhumane conditions they or their relatives endured when locked up – overcrowding, scarce food, outbreaks of skin disease from a lack of soap. Both security detainees and people accused of common crimes said abuse and neglect were rife in the detention facilities where they were held. Forty people who were either former detainees or family members of detainees also described abuse and sometimes torture, particularly in the lockups.

Reuters documented at least 11 deaths of people in custody, including three cases in which the families said they only learned their loved ones had died after their bodies were already buried.

In total, over 140 Syrians were interviewed for this report, including former detainees, relatives, lawyers and human rights activists. Reuters also reviewed communications between jailers and detainees’ families, as well as photos of injuries from alleged torture.

Reuters was unable to independently confirm some details of the accounts by detainees and their families. But those interviewed were consistent in what they described, including the abuse in detention.

In its statement, the government said Syria’s legal, judicial and security institutions needed to be rebuilt after Assad’s fall. Because of “this difficult reality, there are vacuums that lead to negative consequences that violate policies in some cases,” it said.

The government said 84 members of the security forces had been disciplined for incidents of extortion involving detainees and 75 for violence.

Since January, Syria’s Interior Ministry has announced more than 100 arrests for alleged abuses during the Assad era. The Reuters count doesn’t include these people, who are named and face specific accusations.

The conditions described in the prisons and lockups do not approach the brutality of Assad’s rule. The fallen dictator presided over the disappearance of more than 100,000 Syrians during the civil war. Mass graves that his government created to hide the dead are still being discovered. All told, more than 300,000 Syrian civilians perished in the war, according to UN estimates from 2022. Assad’s father, Hafez, ruled with similar ruthlessness. Both oversaw a system marked by torture, extortion and summary execution on an industrial scale.

But human rights advocates say the mass detentions and disappearances have cast a shadow over Sharaa’s government, which came to power on promises to take Syria out of more than five decades of single-family rule. The new leadership is struggling to deliver on those promises, as Reuters has chronicled in a series of articles this year.

The effort to rebuild........

© The Times of Israel